A Cynic's Way of Looking at Life

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IIT-Goa is a once in decades opportunity for Canconcars to welcome this non-polluting large scale product that will put Cancona and Loliem on world map.

There is no other project as environment friendly has educational institute. There is no other project as lucrative as a government institution for jobs and secondary occupations. If a mere Medical college can transform Bambolim into a growing city IIT-Goa can transform Cancona into a thriving and livale urban area instead of pathetically backward region.

One needs to have IQ of a rock or moral fortitude of a toilet brush to oppose this project. Most of the opposition comes from the back that the project benefits someone else more than the opponents. This crab mentality (cliched term but cant find anything better) has kept the region poor for last 50 years and if sane people do not stop them in their tracks now opportunity for developing Canacona might be lost forever.

Property Rights

The more dangerous trend in the Goan villages is the false sense of entitlement for other people’s land. It is not just poor uneducated folks but even otherwise well meaning people like Rajan Parrikar who claim that Goa must be kept green forcibly because they love to see it green. It does not matter what the owner of that land thinks.

Contrary to what media paints the land of IIT-Goa does not belong to community or village. It belongs to a legal body called communidade. This body which has 100% ownership rights has wholeheartedly supported the project.

Ideally if there is rule of law in country this is where the matters must end but there is in thick and constant smoke screen being created that the rest of the village as any say in how communidade maintains its own lands.

Of course just because land belongs to party A does not mean party A can not interfere with the rights of Party B. If party A’s land has ground water, if it contributes to tributaries of major water streams etc. etc. Party A’s choices might affect entire village and in such situations party B consisting of such affected individuals could raise objections.

But democratic vote in a gram-sabha can not possible solve this technical issue. It must be left to the government organization which is acquiring the land and the government must be compelled to compensate all the affected people as well. In any case it is a technical decision needs to be take by government body and could be challenged in court if the affected parties are dissatisfied.

This process should not stop the government from going ahead with acquisition and setup all the bare minimum infrastructure that may not have any impact so far until the affected parties are satisfied.

Jizia is a tax that Islamic governments impose on non-Muslim monoatheist people simply to let them live. Aurangezeb is called a merciful and great King by our leftist historians because he graciously let Hindus too live by paying this tax. Hindus being poly-atheists and idolators technically were not even allowed to live under Islamic rule.

Sadly the modern day so called “Independent India” has Jizia tax as a part of its constitution. Of course it is called something else. Depending on the context it is Article 30 (Special treatment to minority institutions), Right to Education (which is applicable only to Hindus) or 93rd Amendment (denial of autonomy to Hindu institutions).

This is not a blame game. This is not merely Nehru’s ghost haunting us. This is a carefully planned conspiracy where Congres, BJP and Hindu Hriday Samrat Modi, Manohar Parrikar etc. have played a very strong role. This is one Hamam where everyone is truly naked.

NPS is a very good chain of schools in Banglore. It was recently denied its CBSE certification because NMCEI filed an FIR against them and requested CBSE to withdraw its affiliation. NPS is a school chain run by a Hindu person. NMCEI is a body that by law can only have a non-Hindu as its head. So a non-Hindu body passed a judgement on a Hindu run school to basically shut it down.

The reason cites was that NPS forged some minority certificate. It must be noted that minority certificate is the single most important thing in Indian education today as those schools which don’t have a minority certificate lose all autonomy and come under RTE. Because (repeat after me) Right to Education law is applicable only to Hindu run schools.

While people make NPS forgery as a criminal offense totally ignore that a Church run school gets total exemption from all government regulations NPS is trying to avoid by default. There is no way NPS can compete with Church run schools (which even get taxpayer funding) without somehow calling itself a minority.

NPS is like a Hindu who is trying to pretend to be a Muslim to avoid paying Jizia tax. You cant blame him, you should blame the Jizia tax.

Goan Fiasco

Everyone is Goa wants to send their kids to English medium school. It is well known. As per Manohar Parrikar’s policy which is probably a result of some backroom deal with Church, only Church gets taxpayer money to start and run English medium schools.

As a result of this distorted policy by Manohar Parrikar, Hindus will have to spend lot more money if they want to start and English schools. Not just that Hindus are denied government grant which is provided to Church run schools, Hindu schools will also have to comply with Right to Education law. This means they have to keep aside 25% seats for free to Government approved students (read caste based reservations) and for remaining 75% seats too they have to admit students based on government provided criteria which may change from time to time.

A Hindu school may not be able to look at parent’s background before admitting their child for example.

I think Manohar Parrikar is the single person who must accept the blame here. At least the Goan Jizia is completely designed by him. Digamaber Kamat despite all his flaws had passed a uniform law which provided grants even to Hindu run schools. Manohar Parrikar implemented the discriminatory provisions.

Conclusion

I don’t like Congress party. I don’t like the Alemaos and Montserrats and Ranes and Faleiros. I think Parsekar/Parrikar did a good job of short term governance and reducing corruption.

But despite of that I think a swift punishment to BJP is something that voters must consider for this Jizia tax implementation. With BJP in power we might get better roads and better services but we have essentially lost control of our kid’s future. We have lost institutional control on educational institutions run at our own expense.

If this goes unpunished, BJP is likely to bend over backwards in future too.

For the record I do not support BBSM either. BBSM wants to use state coercion to force people into Marathi/Konkani schools. As a matter of principle I would not like that but as far as voting is concerned all faithful voters of BJP must consider BBSM as an acceptable alternative. They at least want uniform application of law.

BBSM in Goa demands that government should not give grants to English medium schools the way it gives these grants to Marathi/Konkani medium schools.

The logic ? English education will be more scarce and expensive and hence poor folks will be forced to send their children to marathi/konkani schools. This is basically BBSM using government’s power to coerce poor people into accepting BBSM’s agenda. This is not freedom this is cronyism.

But the other side is not bright either. At the moment all Church run English schools get government grants but the Hindu run English schools don’t. This is a clear cut apartheid against Hindu run English schools in the state.

If the current regulation continues then over time Church is likely to get full monopoly over high quality education in India as all rich and bright students are more likely to pick an English medium school over other schools.

US has been in top 2 spots in Olympics for over a century. US is a large country with lot of people and hence it is expected.

India on other hand has won only 25 medals throughout all Olympics. Michael Phelps is an American swimmer who has won 26 gold medals in his career. India is equally large and has three times more people that USA. Among those vast number of people it should not be very hard to find someone who can run faster, throw farther and lift heavier than others in the world.

Yet, every Olympics is a sad reminder that as a nation we are pretty pathetic in sports. Once the circus is over we will over-analyze our humiliation. One of the common conclusion would be that “Government is not doing enough”.

The reality is opposite. I think the reason Indians are not getting any medals is because our sports are controlled and funded by government. This needs to stop completely. Part of the reason Cricket thrives in our country is because government does not fund it and people are left to fund themselves.

People pursuing self interest do a better job than government trying to do the same thing.

It might come as a surprise to most people that the money US government spends on their Olympians is 0 dollars. None of those athletes get a penny from tax payers besides the existing public sports infrastructure. A lot of sports infrastructure in USA is built by private parties than government.

People who run USOC have to run to sponsors to get funding. The sponsors pay only if the USOC can convince them that they can win medals. To do a better job of convincing these USOC office bearers then have to travel the whole country finding talent and nurturing it.

Simone Biles is a 19 year old Gymnast and did a historic performance in 2016 Olympics. Given her age she will achieve even more in next one. She does not know who her father was. Her mother is a drug addict and probably rotting in some jail for various other crimes. She is adopted by her grandfather from a foster home.

People who run USOC are not some “great souls”. They earn more than any other athlete. They travel in private jets to venues. They probably know nothing about most of the sports either. But they earn that much because they do a fantastic job of finding talent from 300M American people.

On the contrary all sports federations in India are figuratively owned by some politician. These politicians then force government to fund their sport and the money is spent on his lavish parties and travel. Because even if he does not win a medal he still gets government funding.

I think Indian government must stop funding all the sports. The government must auction off the rights of IOC management to the highest bidder and promise to pay something like 50 crores for every Gold medal any athlete wins.

We will then see smarty pants like Lalit Modi using their talent to hunt best people to win the medals.

There is an interesting Akbar-Birbal story. Akbar once claims that for a parent nothing is more valuable then their child. Birbal disagrees. Birbal proposes an experiment where a monkey and her baby are put in a water tank. Birbal fills up the tank gradually. As the water reaches to the nose level of the baby, the mother monkey quickly picks up her baby and Akbar smiles smelling his victory. But as Birbal pours more and more water the mother tries to lift the baby higher and higher. Eventually the water starts enterning mother’s nose and the mother then puts the baby under her feet and tries to survive. Birbal wins the argument.

This story is from the period where there was no such thing has human rights live alone animal rights. May be the baby dies or may be Akbar’s soliders put both of them to death or whatever. The point is Birbal’s logic that people value their own life most is what matters.

In the real world

Even though parents are selfless towards their children than anyone else in the world, they are not self-less in the absolute sense. In fact the childhood teaching that parents give to their children such as “parents always wish best for their kids” is not really true.

When parents have only one child they do tend to pay hell lot of attention to that only child. But when parents have more children they always optimize for the welfare of some specific children over others. This means sometimes hurting interest of one child over other.

It is observed that in India, a girl child is often more malnourished, subjected to more household work and given less money to educate herself than the male child. It is extremely common that many times the girl does not even get a share in parent’s inheritance.

When parents have limited money for say higher education they will prefer their son over daughters. In fact if one child is smarter they might prefer to spend more money and attention on the welfare of that child over other.

Children as currency

Why is there so much taboo about inter-caste marriage, love marriages and sex before marriage ?

This question is not just applicable to modern world but we need to ask why we think of these things as bad historically ?

The real reason here is that we are biologically programmed to prefer our children over other people’s children. Contraceptives are modern invention. For thousands of years people did not know if the child they fathered was their own. (Historically speaking it is extremely common for women and men to cheat as a consequence it is estimated that anywhere between 2-5% of children are not of their legal parents and the ratio has actual dropped in modern times).

Virginity thus becomes and important characteristics in marriage. It improves the value of a female in marriage.

But then why hate love marriages ?

Reason is parents use their children to form alliances with other rich and powerful houses. Check the amount of background information people collect in arranged marriages in India. The salary of the groom to his real estate investments everything is calculated. While parent might pretend that they want the best for their children in reality they are optimizing for “family has whole” here sometimes by sacrificing interest of the child.

It is common for poor people to marry their young daughter into a rich house even if the groom is over-aged. This is a clear case of killing their daughter’s welfare for the sake of family.

Using the rhetoric to hide the facts

Why do traditionally we are taught to respect our elders ? Why are we taught to obey our parents without questioning ? Why are we told the stories of Rama and Shravana and others ?

It all ties into this. Parents want to use their children and yet want to make it look like a virtue.

But it is valuable too.

It must be noted that this isn’t bad at all. In fact the families who marry with planning, families where parents carefully optimise their children’s welfare tend to survive better than those where parents probably truly thought of their children as equal.

Human evolution has made us that way because it helped us survive. My attempt here is not to paint parents as bad people at all. On the contrary we owe our survival to them.

Conclusion:

Yet, when you might face a moral issue between making your parents happy v/s making your own self happy I think you are way better off picking yourself over your parents.

Also when you see kids questioning adults, being skeptical of adults etc. don’t think of them as spoiled brats on the contrary they might end up achieving lot more than you do in life.

It is not a co-incidence that people like Sambhaji, Samarth Ramdas, Ramana Maharashi, Buddha etc. achieved real greatness v/s mythical greatness of Rama. They all rebeled against their parents. (Of course bozo the clown might have done that too so correlation is not really causation).

I don’t consume alcohol. But this is fascinating video about failures of central planning aka socialism.

Venezuela is the world’s top oil rich country. Despite this the country is not just poor but pathetically poor. Venezuela’s malls are shut because they don’t have electricity anymore. You can not even buy a tissue paper and the only brewery in the country has shut down because it can not source the raw materials any more.

How come a resource rich country comes to such a situation ? The answer lies in central planning, the same model which has kept India poor.

Venezuela thought that it could pass laws that will ensure everyone is equally rich, where prices will be controlled and the government in its infinite wisdom could allocate all resources fairly among its people. Very much the same way some people do not want IPL in Mumbai while there is a drought in Latur.

The result was massive corruption, super inefficient allocation of rare resources and eventually a total collapse.

The lesson for India is that central planning does not work. Government controlling education, worse controlling only Hindu schools, capping fees, regulating coaching classes, AICTE’s terror etc only leads to massive inefficiency in Indian education. Indian education sector is pretty much like Venezuela. A wasteland where you cant get anything done and as a result 600,000 brilliant students flock to rest of the of the world for better education.

Same goes for agriculture and real estate. Indian farmer is poor despite having huge manpower, lots of free water and $$$$ in subsidies. Home prices in India are very high despite shittiest quality, almost non-existent private property rights and complete legal uncertainty.

All this because government claimed that “we need to do it fairly/poor must be protected” etc.

Free education or ceiling on fees also means scarcity of quality and ceiling on quality of education.

Subsidies to loss making agriculture means loss making agriculture increases driving people into poverty

Free water for agriculture means people don’t pay for the water they use and hence end up wasting more water.

Zoning laws and agricultural/non-agricultural conversion bans means land can not be used for the optimal purposes leading to scarcity and higher prices.

I think people calling “bharat ki barbadi” must have right to shout it as loudly as they want. It must be covered under free speech. The true test of free speech is when someone says something unimaginable to everyone else.

However, we don’t have to hear that speech or even fund them. JNU should have ideally simply rusticated the students who shouted those slogans and should have asked full refund of all the subsidies they lived on.

Sedition in India is a misused law. The so called nationalist BJP is perfectly find aligning with PDP in Kashmir for the sake of power and the paragon of Nationalism Mr. Modi is happy to hug PDP’s Mufti yet the students who opposed Afzal’s death end up in jail under sedition laws.

I have zero sympathy for JNU. I think it is a cancer feeding off our tax money and the whole university must be shut down. Not a penny of taxpayer money must be wasted on liberal arts education in this country when hardly any education in the country makes people employable.

But on the other hand the real issue that both Indian society and Indian state seems to lack basic principles on which they can argue their case. The left wing people and Idea of India people however have their agenda clear.

It is a tough battle and people like Modi seem not particularly equipped to fight it.

People often wrongly assume that government programs help society. It is the private individuals and capitalism that helps societies improve faster and better. I read the following lines on Quora some days back.

What helped humanity more ? Edison’s light bulb or the tax paid by Edison and Bulb manufactures ?

AICTE is regulatory body that is part of MHRD. Even though it stands for All India Council for Technical Education, like a tentacled monster most government regulators are; its tentacles are around totally unrelated matters such as MBA programs.

MHRD and AICTE are the reason why engineering education in the country has become worthless. Indian students are leaving the country for MS programs in USA/UK and AU by taking loans from Indian banks at 11% interest rate.

MHRD’s education policy is devoid of sense and logic and most certainly goes totally against fundamental economic reasoning. While the Congress probably looked at education as parking lots for their intellectual henchmen BJP seems to think of it as a tool to propagate half-ass ideas about culture/nationalism etc.

This is as idiotic as it gets. While the monkeys in AICTE probably glee at this the blame is actually on supreme court.

The apex court had ruled that to prevent commercialisation of technical education, the fee charged by private institutes should be decided by the state governments until a national-level fee fixation committee gives its recommendations.

It is totally beyond me why it is Supreme Court’s business to decide if technical education should be commercial or not. This is probably because the government in charge of these things fails to assert itself on this issues and simply agrees with the court.

Quality engineering education in the country is already scarce. As a result of this fee cap colleges will further reduce the quality of education. Fee cap also limits the amount college can spend on faculty, infra and campus expansion.

This decision is likely to be another nail in already buried coffin of Indian higher education. This is also an example of why Smriti Irani and PM Modi are incompetent to handle higher education or carry out any meaningful reforms.

Indian middle-class families who have bright children should now save money to send their kids abroad for better and useful education.

Any typical society comprises of different type of people. Most people do some 9-6 job, reproduce and eventually live off their saved money. Some people work hard, do something exceptional and get rich. There is a third category of unproductive individuals who want more money and fame but do not want to work to earn it.

As a matter of fact all of us are a combination of these three traits. Who does not want to live a rich life without working for it? Everyone.

A lot of intellectuals who are often from the liberal arts seem to have put their intelligence to such use. They learn and teach inconsequential subjects in third rate universities but over years build good connections to get identified as “foremost intellectuals” in their area. Romila Thapar becomes “eminent historian” where as Irfan Habib becomes head of ICHR.

This is not to say these people lack scholarship. They probably do prove themselves occasionally by writing few useful books. But in the end they are parasites which feed off taxpayer money.

Writers and journalist often fall into the same category. Writers are often not as powerful as journalists but with rights connections they do become an influence. I learned that 12 people in Goa have got Sahitya Academy award. I know at least one person whose literary output is as good as that of 10th standard student’s language answer paper. But the point is he is well connected. These people are parasites.

Parasites need a host. The host need to be healthy in order for parasites to feed and live well. Congress party has been one such host which was healthy for last several decades.

British were good at rewarding loyalty. That is why Nehru and Patel got power while Bose died a suspicious death at an unknown location. Nehru rewarded loyalty too. He basically appointed sub optimal people only because they had his loyalty.

Those were the first parasites. Luxurious cultural organizations built on prime property in Delhi at the expense of poor Indian taxpayers. Whose who of Delhi’s power circles attended classical music concerts and mushayaras at the places. Newcomers created networks, established people grew their power and outsiders struggled to get entry.

None of this is unique to Delhi to India. In each state, city, university, company wherever you find power concentrated you will find people who are willing to suck up to the power to benefit from the benevolence of the powerful. It is very natural thing.

The problem becomes acute when the host is too strong. Like a congress party which probably was in power for like 55+ years. With such a strong host the parasites had much longer to foster. Those who managed to taste the power early are even more powerful and helped bring in more loyal friends. General Thapar’s son became TV Journalist, DD chief Ghose’s daughter became “senior journalist”, some cricket player’s son became another “senior journalist”. Soft porn writer Sardar became noted novelist and lot of other two penny people became social activists, columnists etc.

These people have guarded their space pretty well except the last decade. Someone like Jagdish Bhagvati had to leave Delhi university only because he was not ready to turn leftist.

For these people tolerance only meant tolerance of their own ideas and authority. Intimidation was an argument and assault was the proof. They banned books, work and people from participating in discourse without any impunity. Countless books movies etc. have got banned because they were not as respectful towards Congress party’s icons as the Congress party wanted people to be.

Economist Shenoy is another example. Admired by the likes of Hayek he was the only opponent of 5 year plan strategy of Nehru and hence remained a footnote in history despite his immense contribution to the field of economics.

There are opposite examples too where person belonging to opposite ideologies became a comrade because he helped legitimize these parasites. Vajpeyi or Sudheendra Kulkarni are good example. We were told Vajpeyi was right man in wrong party because he gave space to these parasites. Sudheendra Kulkarni who happened to be an adviser to “Radical Hindu”politician was a star of the circle mostly because of delusional behavior with respect to Pakistan and vocal support to the output of the parasitic culture.

Parasites had learned that they need to cultivate such patrons in potential opposition too.

Now they fight for survival

Communists were at the vanguard of these parasitic culture. They were nurtured by Indira Gandhi. Thanks to people like Arun Shourie or Sita Ram Goel they lost their shine long back even before the advent of social media.

With the rise of social media where views spread based on general person’s choice, view of some Nayantara Sehgal does not become more important than that of Abdul Mia Kanpurwale. In such an age their decline is even faster.

I am not sure who fell first, whether the intellectual pimps who were trying to sell us Rahul Gandhi or whether Congress party the patronized such pimps. Either ways both of them are on decline.

The antibody

Most of these parasites have one thing common. Hatred of Narendra Modi and one goal to paint him as a 100% evil man despite the miserable failures at doing so in past.

Narendra Modi’s personal character has less to do with this hatred than the mere fact that he is an 100% outsider to the parasitic culture. He is not the host to which these parasites could switch. His mere presence would destroy these parasites.

So when people like Nayantara Sehgal, Arundhati Roy or some other chump returns their awards (but not other government perks of course), it is hard to take these people seriously because they care less about you and me and more about their own eco-system that is getting disturbed.

The Danger of BJP

While most people are correct to see most of these liberal parasites as shameless hypocrites who would go to any extent to protect their own parasitic culture, people often forget that these people might have some point after all.

Narendra Modi’s hurting this parasitic culture is not a bad thing but there plenty evidence that he is replacing it with even more perverse type of parasites.

People like Romila Thapar or Nayantara Sehgal may not be the intellectuals worth listening to but at least these are not people who would run a mock on street. Or act as if they have a monopoly over patriotism.

Narendra Modi has silently rewarded assholes in the party. People like Mahesh Sharma have become cabinet ministers. Other notable incompetent appoints can not be listed here for the sake of brevity of Gajendra Chauhan as FTII director must be fresh in everyone’s mind.

Naredra Modi used development as a plant to win elections, using radical Hindu elements to win state elections but not serving Hindu interests or implementing economic reforms when in power.

Hypocrisy Exhibits

Sonia Gandhi passed a law explicitly banning Hindus from holding post on a central government body called NCMEI. I am unaware of any other Indian law banning any person from what is an administrative body of the government.

As a next step Sonia Gandhi and her parasites passed the law called Right to Education which happens to be a draconian law by any standards. In the name of right the law puts arbitrary restrictions on existing schools as well as new schools. The law affects schools only adversely closing down more schools than in past.

But the best part of the law is that it is applicable only to Hindu run schools. Which means while Hindu run schools get terrorized by educational inspectors, Hindu run schools are forced to keep aside 25% seats to freeloaders (thus imposing a cost on remaining 75%), Hindu run schools must have more toilets, more space, more teachers etc. Church run schools get a blanket exemption.

This is same as a business is forced to pay 25% tax on its operation where as other business gets tax exemption. It is clear who will grow faster.

Church run schools than ban pagan symbols such as bangles or mehndi. Example here.

While Sonia Gandhi’s government passed such cringe worthy laws, the even more fascinating part is that the BJP government which almost everyone seems to call a pro-Hindu government has not done an iota of attempt to change this law neither it bothered to oppose it in parliament.

Fall of congress is a great boon for Indian society. Fall of the left liberals is a blessing. Sadly, BJP’s incompetence might mean a botched opportunity to build a better society.